Does Palin's defense of Dr. Laura make her politically irrelevant?

When Sarah Palin resigned as governor of Alaska, she said “I’m not wired to operate under the same old politics as usual.” And boy, has she ever lived up to her words. Her newfound cause of defending Dr. Laura Schlessinger is case and point. Backing Dr. Laura, as Schlessinger is more popularly known, on Twitter was not enough. Now, Palin has taken to her Facebook page to ask: “Does anyone seriously believe that Dr. Laura Schlessinger is a racist?” To further clarify, she writes, “Anyone, I mean, who isn’t already accusing all conservatives, Republicans, tea party Americans, etc., etc., etc. of being racists?”

Palin fails to recognize that the caller who we now know is Nita “Jade” Hanson didn’t ask for a political polemic. She didn’t even invite this controversy. The woman called seeking advice about her husband, who happens to be white not standing up for her. Now, if the woman had been obese and her husband’s family and friends consistently cracked fat jokes without him ever standing up for her, what would the reaction have been? It’s doubtful that we would be here. Dr. Laura, not Hanson, sensationalized race. Yet, Palin painted Dr. Laura as the victim. No one boxed her into this corner; she got there all by herself.

But since Palin asked, yes, there are many people who think that Dr. Laura is indeed a racist. Not because of her use of the “n-word” in reference to HBO’s black comics but, rather, for her track record in offending many people, not just African Americans.

Perhaps Palin missed the many things Dr. Laura has had to say regarding gay people over the years. It is one thing to say that you are opposed to gay marriage but quite another to suggest that being gay is a “biological error.”

Even worse, in a 1999 broadcast, Dr. Laura, according to the Huffington Post, made a comparison using the racial slur “gook” when opining about the word “homosexual” as a description of gay people. “Instead of calling them North Vietnamese, South Vietnamese, Communist or what have you, they started calling the Vietnamese agents gooks,” she stated on air. “One of the reasons you call them gooks is because it’s easy to kill a gook, harder to kill a person. So in changing the name of the thing, it changes how we perceive it and how we can behave toward it. When we have the word homosexual, we are clarifying the dysfunction, the deviancy, the reality.”

Under most people’s definition of racist, Dr. Laura’s consistent behavior qualifies her for the title. It’s unfortunate that Palin, a former candidate for the second highest position in our nation’s government, disagrees. But, even more troublesome, is Sarah Palin’s willingness to thrust herself uninvited within any issue du jour of interest to a Republican and/or conservative audience. It’s like she’s become the GOP’s self-appointed ambulance chaser, ready to take on any case, with absolutely no regard to its merit.

Sarah Palin may not believe that Dr. Laura’s unnecessary use of the n-word is reason to object, but, hopefully, she’s in the minority. With Dr. Laura’s track record, it’s very curious indeed that Palin would spend her political currency on this particular issue. When she reportedly asked her kids, “hey, do you want me to make a positive difference and fight for all our children’s future from outside the governor’s office?” in making her decision to step down as Alaska’s governor, was this really what she had in mind? Let’s just hope her latest actions continue to remove any possibility that she will be a viable candidate on anybody’s party in 2012.